If you think your extra helping of holiday dinner will offset your headache from the bottle of wine you downed by yourself — think again.
Experts explained that even though eating a lot of food while you chug cocktails may make you feel less drunk because it slows alcohol’s release into your bloodstream, it also slows your body in breaking down the alcohol — and won’t keep you from getting a hangover.
In fact, eating lots of food might actually increase your hangover recovery time.
“Although food is often recommended to accompany alcohol, it can slow how quickly your body metabolizes alcohol, meaning it takes longer to leave your system,” Dr. Hussain Ahmad, consultant doctor at Click2Pharmacy in the UK, told the Daily Mail.
Clifford Stephan, nutritional scientist and founder of sober support site Booze Vacation, echoed Ahmad’s sentiments.
“That is not going to help you the day after,” Stephan told the Daily Mail of chasing shots with a big meal.
But beware: the solution is not to drink excessively on an empty stomach — which can lead to fatal alcohol poisoning or an alcohol-induced injury.
“When you drink on an empty stomach, much of the alcohol you drink passes quickly from the stomach into the small intestine, where most of it is absorbed into the bloodstream,” according to Healthline.
“This intensifies all the side effects of drinking, such as your ability to think and coordinate your body movements.”
Ahmad explained that one drink can be processed by the body in one to two hours, but “multiple alcoholic drinks slow how quickly your body can metabolize and pass it, and it can take up to 12 hours to completely leave your [bloodstream],” he told the Daily Mail.
After alcohol leaves the bloodstream, it travels to other parts of the body, which can take days to fully detox.
Typically the body takes around one to two days to recover from a hangover. Around 12 hours after drinking is when people can expect to start feeling hungover — and sometimes a little sad.
Dopamine, which is the body’s feel-good hormone, drops to low levels and can impact one’s mood.
Other typical signs and symptoms of a hangover are thirst, headache, gastrointestinal upset, disrupted sleep, and sensitivity to light and sound, as well as increased blood pressure, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA).
Those who wish to avoid a hangover should avoid drinking or keep it to a minimum.
“There is no cure for a hangover other than time,” the NIAAA declared.
The NIAAA site busted the myths that drinking coffee or taking a shower can cure or prevent a hangover, and nutritional scientist Stephan did the same.
“A lot of people will reach for coffee to try to jump-start their day, but coffee can be rough on your already irritated stomach lining and will further dehydrate you,” Stephan told the Daily Mail.
Things like constipation or diarrhea, caused by alcohol’s disruption of a person’s microbiome, can take another day to improve. While over-the-counter painkillers may help a headache, they can irritate the lining of the stomach even more, and acetaminophen shouldn’t be taken with alcohol because it’s harmful to the liver.
Stephan recommended that people drink water with sea salt in order to give your body the electrolytes it needs.
However, the NIAAA said that there’s no proof electrolytes help a hangover.
“To help ease their hangover symptoms, some people turn to electrolyte-rich sports drinks or other products, or even intravenous (IV) treatments, in an effort to treat electrolyte imbalance caused by increased urination and fluid loss as a result of drinking,” the institute’s site explained.
“Research has not found a correlation between the extent of electrolyte disruptions and the severity of hangovers, or the impact of added electrolytes on hangover severity. In most people, the body will quickly restore electrolyte balance once the effects of alcohol subside.”
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